4 days ago
Who Was Kate Spade?
'Baby, baby,' Kate Spade would squeal, about to tuck into a tasty sandwich, party with friends or, on occasion, sell her cheerily colorful handbags to a fancy store.
In 'We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship With Kate Spade,' Elyce Arons remembers her pal as a force of nature with a curiously reticent streak. In the memoir, out this month, Ms. Arons, who was Ms. Spade's former business partner, ally and confidant for nearly 40 years, details the peaks, and rare valleys, of their lasting friendship. It was one that endured until the designer took her own life in 2018, an event that stunned and saddened a world of admirers.
From the time the two met as dorm mates at the University of Kansas, Katy, as Ms. Arons calls her, combined an unshakable work ethic with a disarmingly infectious charm. At a glance, they could not have been more different, Ms. Arons, a farm girl from Kansas, Ms. Spade, then Kate Brosnahan, the quintessence of Midwestern prepdom, clad in a pop-collar polo shirt, baggy khakis and Weejuns loafers.
'Whenever I did anything that Katy thought was kind of 'farmy,' she would refer to me as Jethro,' Ms. Arons writes, confiding that she, on the other hand, initially found Ms. Spade's buttoned-up style a trifle dull.
Still, the two became all but inseparable, enjoying frat parties, shopping for secondhand clothes — it was all they could afford — and aspiring, like their idol Mary Richards on 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show,' to glam careers in the big city.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
